


Heavenfaced

by Marvels



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, F/F, Frigid Woe, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29207775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvels/pseuds/Marvels
Summary: An accident in the ruins of Eiselcross leaves Beau with an ancient disease and a limited amount of time for the Mighty Nein to cure her before she's left as frozen and decimated as Aeor.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 58
Kudos: 331





	1. No One's Careful All the Time

It wasn’t until the day after they’d emerged from that first ruins that she noticed that anything was wrong. Beau had made a point to avoid touching shit, for the most part, while in the Aeorian caverns. None of the ruins made sense, they were so incredibly complex and old and so,  _ so _ dangerous at the same time. So she’d noticed, while walking behind Jester, that the tiefling’s tail whipped just a little too frenetically and a vial was loosed from its cradle, falling and shattering onto the ground. 

The dust that sprayed up was pure powdery white, almost blue in the light of the globules, and it released into the air around her with a force that seemed more aggressive than a simple fall should have released. Jester, Fjord and Veth whipped around from ahead of her, and Beau was sure that if she turned to look back, Caduceus, Caleb and Yasha were looking forward towards her as well. 

She took a breath, preparing to defend herself, but with the inhalation, she’d felt a wave of bitter, dry cold force its way down her throat, choking her for a moment, forcing her down onto a knee. Looking up at Jester with her mouth agape and a hand on her neck, Beau tried to force down the feeling of panic as the wave of cold made its way down to her lungs. She felt paralyzed.

“Beau? Beau what’s wrong, what was that?” Jester made to approach her face to face, but Beau violently thrashed an arm at her, clearly communicating that she should get back. It must have only been a few seconds, but it felt like hours, the feeling of unrelenting cold restricting in her chest and paralyzing her throat. But as soon as it came on, the cold was gone again. Beau took a deep, shuddering breath, the cold lingering in her chest a moment longer, then fading out as well.

“The vial… I didn’t touch it, but I saw it fall,” Beau said, her voice cracking a little, as if it had been out of use for a long time. She couldn’t tell Jester what had happened. If she’d been able to look up and meet Jester’s eye, Beau would have known that Jester already knew.

“What happened?” This was Caduceus now, his low, gravelly voice a warmth all its own.

“It sprayed something, this white cloud,” Beau answered, pausing a moment to try and clear her throat. “I think I breathed it in?” She looked up now, eyes leaping from Jester to Caduceus, who was standing at her shoulder, large eyes looking back at her, doe-like.

“You looked like you were choking,” Veth supplied unhelpfully, peeking from around Fjord towards her, crossbow still out, appearing on high-alert.

“Yeah,” Beau said, straightening and then standing up from where she’d been kneeling amongst the broken glass. She brushed it to the side with one boot before swiveling around to get the whole party in her sights. “It felt like it was paralyzing me-- my throat and lungs. They were freezing.” 

Behind her in the room, Caleb scowled, approaching the vial shards that she’d kicked away zeroing in on on them, beginning to mutter some arcane phrases. Yasha was scowling too, but her focus was dialed in completely on Beau’s face, eyes searching her, assessing the danger, almost angry that something so irrelevant had slipped past their defenses.

“And now?” Fjord was standing a full two paces away from her, concerned, but wary.

“I feel…” Beau put a hand on her chest and leveled herself with another deep breath, testing the stretch of her lungs and ribs, and found nothing amiss. “Fine. I feel fine. Probably was something inert, being so old here.”

“Might have dodged the arrow there then, pal,” Caduceus said, smiling at her. It was a reserved smile though, as if even he didn’t believe it. 

Beau agreed, as a provision, to tie a spare sash of hers around her nose and mouth before they traveled onward. But as they walked further into the ruin, even with Caduceus and Jester checking in on her every hour, she showed no signs of having been affected by the powdery substance. 

The threshold crest was already gone by the time they arrived, and ruefully, the party decided to head back up to the surface to return to Dagen before nightfall.

Beau fell into step with Yasha as they turned to make their way back out, and she noticed how the barbarian watched her, not warily, like the rest of her party did, but with a mournful kind of fear.

“Are you feeling alright still?” Yasha asked. Beau smiled, before realizing that it didn’t show below the makeshift mask she’d thrown over her nose and mouth. 

“Yeah, of course, I’m totally fine,” Beau said, trying to throw the expression of bravado from her face to her voice.

“I did not like how it attacked you earlier,” Yasha said gravely. “I just want to be careful. I don’t trust that it won’t hurt you again.” Beau felt her heart stutter.

“I don’t want it to,” she agreed, allowing herself a moment of boldness as she bumped Yasha’s upper arm with her own shoulder. “But I think I’ll be okay.”

* * *

Beau woke up in the morning after taking first watch inside the dome, and she knew something was wrong. She woke up to a deep, full body shiver. The same feeling of deep-set, permafrost-like cold had returned to her chest, and her throat felt stripped down and raw, as if a gale had been howling inside of her for the better part of the night. Pulling out an extra layer to wear under her coat, she yanked it over her shoulders before pulling her coat back on over it. The cold did not abate. 

The others were beginning to stir. Fjord and Caleb, who had taken last watch, were both already awake and chewing through rations of dry bread and hard cheese. Fjord grunted to acknowledge Beau’s consciousness, which led Caleb to look up at her from the book in his lap. He closed the book, tucking it back into his pack, and gestured for Beau to close the little unoccupied space between them.

“You are awake,” Caleb said.

“I’m awake,” Beau replied gamely. She turned to a prone position and began to go through a set of pushups. They were difficult that morning, more difficult than her first set had any right to be. It was as if someone had taken a bat to the socket of her shoulder joints where a sore tiredness radiated down her upper arms. Pulling out of the set early, Beau returned to a sitting position and began to stretch the tender joints and muscles. All the while, Caleb watched her carefully. When Fjord left the dome to relieve himself, Caleb turned back to Beau with a renewed seriousness.

“You seem a little worse for wear this morning, Beauregard,” Caleb said finally. Beau glared at him, trying to twist the fatigue out of her muscles like water from a rag.

“I’m still waking up?” Beau countered. Even she knew that it was not an impressive excuse. She wouldn’t bother asking why he’d waited until Fjord had gone. Despite the two of them feeling like brothers to her, they were not similar people, and didn’t share the same kind of relationship with each other that they shared with her.

“You were shivering in your sleep during third watch,” Caleb said crisply.

“Maybe I was cold.”

“You know as well as I that the interior of this dome is a lovely temperate climate.”

“So?”

“So I think that there was something to that substance you inhaled yesterday in the ruins. Your lips are practically blue,” Caleb said. His exasperation was beginning to come through, and intellectually Beau knew why. But it was barely sunrise and intellectual Beau was not in commission yet.

“I’ll be sure to let you know if I have any more symptoms of being cold while we’re out here on the tundra, Caleb,” Beau sneered. Caleb looked a little annoyed, but more worried.

“Beauregard, I will not tell the others, but I think you should. If something happened… Aeor was full of mad mages, and the things that they left behind them.. We cannot assume that they are safe.”

Beau grunted back wordlessly before going back to a prone plank position, and forcing her uncooperative muscles through another round of pushups, desperate to force some energy or life back into her arms. Caleb sighed, and turned back to his breakfast. Though she went through her full workout that morning, Beau couldn’t seem to break a sweat, or break through the cold feeling in her chest. It would be fine. Probably. 

* * *

No one else noticed the lag in her speed or her strength, or her unrelenting shivers, until the following day when they were set upon by a pack of direwolves. Frustration began to seep into Beau’s movements as she felt herself moving slower, her punches landing a little less effectively. It wasn’t until she reached within to pull from her ki and found nothing there that she swore, loudly. It had been there only seconds before, and she knew her body and her ki well enough to know that there should have been more there. 

The distraction had been more than enough for two of the pack of direwolves to set in on her, their teeth bared and vicious. She fought back, of course she did, but she felt sluggish, and couldn’t move fast enough to throw her customary number of retaliatory attacks. By the time Yasha was able to get to her and help pull the wolves off of her, Beau was prone, one arm pulled defensively over her head, gauged with bite marks. Utterly defeated. And somehow, colder than before. Maybe it was the snow on the back of her neck, but she felt a trickle of quicksilver cold trace down her back.

The sounds of angry, Zemnian incantations and sword meeting flesh cut through and ended the barrage that had pinned Beau down. She was breathing heavily, trying to not let the panic run its course through her system as she struggled up into a seated position. Yasha was no longer standing over her, but crouched down in front of her, face flecked with a red spray of gore.

“Are you alright?” She asked. Her brow was drawn as her gaze raked over Beau’s form.

“Fuckin’ embarrassed, but I’m fine,” Beau replied tersely. Her arms were littered with bite marks, and she could feel the warm trickle of blood creeping down the side of her face, where an errant claw must have hit. The rest of the Mighty Nein were convening around her now, and Beau felt her shame deepen, their attention only forcing it to swell in her chest. She looked down at her lap, picking at the tears in her clothes where the wolves’ teeth had torn through.

“Beauregard,” Caleb started. He was standing directly in front of her now, his voice deeply uneasy. “Look up at me, please.”

Reluctantly, Beau lifted her chin to meet Caleb’s gaze. He flinched, and Yasha made an angry hissing sound beside him.

“What? Oh…” The others had approached now, and they were all looking at her with a shared discomfort. Jester and Caduceus began talking rapidly with each other, the names of spells and potions and rituals slipping into earshot every few seconds.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Beau snapped. Her arms moved to hug herself tighter because shit if she wasn’t still cold despite the self-conscious heat in her face.

Yasha reached out, carefully, like she was moving towards some venomous snake, before taking Beau’s arm and pulling her hand out from where Beau had tucked it into her armpit for warmth. Though her hand and forearm were wrapped in cloth wraps and her bracers and her maelstrom gloves, Yasha worked the sleeves of her coat and thermal up to expose the bare skin of Beau’s arm. There, on the dark, tanned skin of her arm, were dark blue veins.

She had seen her veins before of course, in their slight ridges on the backs of her hands and arms, on the soles of her feet. With her darker complexion, the veins had never really shown any color before, though she knew lighter skinned people like Caleb and Yasha were prone to light blue and violet colors on the inside of their forearms or hands. But this wasn’t like that. 

The veins were a dark blue, almost indigo, and stood out with the vividness of a tattoo. The thickest veins stood out the darkest, with smaller branching veins fading into a lighter blue. It was a veritable spiderweb of blue, and Beau looked up at Yasha with a horror she didn’t bother to try and conceal with bluster.

“It’s on your neck too, Beauregard. Your face,” Caleb said. His voice stayed low and serious, but she could hear the slightest shake in it. That was the nice thing about Caleb, she supposed, he was never the type to say  _ I told you so _ . He was a cocky son of a bitch, he knew what he knew, but he didn’t revel in being right as much as he sulked in it.

“Well shit,” Beau said, trying to smile up at her friends, trying to give them some sort of comfort in their shared fear.

Fjord pressed his lips together in a tight smile, clearly trying to make the same effort towards Beau.Yasha’s hands were still lingering on Beau’s outstretched arm, one holding her hand and the other on the hem of Beau’s shirtsleeve. Her thumb traced down onto the dark blue of the vein with shaky-handed reverence. 

“You were right, I guess,” Beau said smiling weakly up at her. “Shouldn’t have trusted it.”

“No, we shouldn’t have,” Yasha said, her expression stony. “You don’t look well. You didn’t fight like you’re well either.”

“Oh thanks,” Beau said, only half joking, the shame still sitting heavy in her chest.

“I know that you are trying to joke, but I am trying to be serious,” Yasha said, a tinge of anger in her tone. “We do not know what that stuff did to you and until we know, I do not want to make light of it.” Beau flinched a little against her will at the stern words, so unusual and authoritative from Yasha, and she saw the anger fall by degrees from Yasha’s face in response.

“Yeah, I know,” Beau said. She tried to keep her voice neutral, but failed at keeping the sullenness out. Jester and Caduceus seemed to have reached an agreed course of action then, because they closed the distance between themselves and the rest of the party, Jester’s face uncommonly serious.

“We should find a good place to set up camp,” Jester said, waving a hand to what must have been a faraway Dagen, just coming out from under his cover following the fight. “I think we need to show Dagen the tower, because we think Beau should be indoors tonight.”

Beau swallowed the scoff that was rising in her throat, retaliatory and mean. Since she was young, she’d always hated being spoken about like she wasn’t there. 

“May I give you just a bit of a heal in the meantime?” Caduceus asked. Beau really wished she had the energy to be mad at them, but looking up at Caduceus, she just nodded tiredly. Yasha started to move back, letting go of her hand, but Beau instinctively turned her hand over to clutch at Yasha’s. It was enough to keep her there. That was all Beau wanted. She could feel Yasha’s gaze boring into the side of her face, but she didn’t look up. She couldn’t.

Caduceus’s hand settled down onto Beau’s shoulder, and a temperate breeze blew gently across her face, the Wildmother’s healing closing up the worst of the bite wounds and soothing their more immediate pain. Beau looked up to Caduceus with a feeling of doubtful hope, and saw his ears droop a little as his doe-like eyes scanned her face. 

“Still there?” She asked. Caduceus nodded and gave her shoulder a squeeze before holding out a hand to help her to her feet. Yasha’s grip, still tight on her other hand, helped balance out the support as the two tallest of the group. 

“We can try some more things once we’re back in the tower,” Jester said, nodding at Beau in encouragement. “That was like our tiny-baby plan, like, we did not even think that was going to work, so  _ don’t _ worry!”

“I’m not worried, thanks Jes,” Beau said, smiling weakly at her. She heard Yasha huff from her left, and finally turned to look at her. Yasha looked a little chagrined at Beau’s attention.

“ _ I’m _ worried,” Yasha implored. Beau squeezed Yasha’s hand, and tried not to let the adoration show too explicitly on her face.

“That’s why I can afford to not worry about it right now,” Beau said, smiling up at her. “I’ve got you- I mean, I’ve got all of you, taking care of that for me.” A slight smile twitched at the corner of Yasha’s mouth before she schooled it back into seriousness. 

Looking past Jester and Caduceus, Beau saw Fjord, ever the spokesperson, ever the diplomat, talking to Dagen and seeming to explain the situation. Dagen was nodding along, though his eyebrows were raised in clear surprise. He must have told him about the tower then. Turning back to their group, Fjord gave Beau what she supposed was supposed to be a reassuring smile.

“Dagen knows a good cave system on the base of that mountain, about a mile and a half out, we can set up the tower there.”

“Can you make it there, Beau?” Yasha asked immediately.

“I’m weird-looking, not dead,” Beau huffed. “Yeah, I can make it.” 

Beau resented the doubts that her party were having about her, but was secretly very glad to have a reason to keep Yasha’s hand in hers as they set off again. As they walked, Beau tried to just focus on the feeling of the warmth of Yasha’s hand, and the way she navigated so carefully to keep Beau on the easiest path, warning her quietly of patches of ice, as if she couldn’t see. At least once, Beau caught Jester’s eye as Yasha would reach over to support Beau’s elbow as she clambered over some icy incline on the path, and they would exchange a genuine, mischievous grin. She assumed this meant that Jester was already scheming to put them in her sketchbook.

When they reached the base of one of the smaller mountains, Dagen moved with a surety that Beau had come to admire, ducking past the low hanging branches of conifers and moving with a nimbleness that she would have once thought impossible for a chair-bound individual. He called them to follow and Beau found her eyebrows shooting up in surprise despite herself as they were led into a well-concealed cavern with high ceilings and a dry warmth that came from the blocked off wind. 

“Will this work?” He asked gruffly.

“This should do just fine,  _ danke _ ,” Caleb said eagerly, clapping the dwarf on the shoulder before beginning to set up his conjuration on the dry floor. Beau watched him blankly, focusing on the feeling of Yasha’s hand in hers, because if she didn’t focus on that, she’d be hyperfocusing on the cold in her chest or the slowness of her limbs or the eyes of her other party members glued to the strange new dark veins criss-crossing her body. She just wanted them to stop looking like that.

When the tower went up, Yasha was quick to pull Beau through the door ahead of the group, behind only Caleb. She looked at Beau expectantly, and Beau smiled back uncertainly. It wasn’t until another round of shivers shook her body that Yasha’s face fell and Beau understood. It was a matter of trying to help, hoping that she’d be able to help. As if her hand in Beau’s wasn’t already more helpful than a heal from Caduceus.

“Thank you,” Beau said tentatively. “For staying with me today.” Yasha smiled a little ruefully at that, and nodded before letting her hand drop from Beau’s. 

“Of course, Beau,” she said.

The rest of the group was following behind, showing Dagen the way the place worked, while he tried very poorly to hide his awe. As they, one by one began to look at her again, Beau felt the desperate need to disappear.

“I’m going up to my rooms for a while,” Beau said. Jester and Caleb looked ready to protest, so Beau held her hands up in defense, feeling her temper prick. “Just want a hot bath and a moment to… gather my thoughts. I’ll come back down in an hour or something. It’ll be better that way, you can talk about me like I’m not there while I’m actually not there.”

She didn’t wait for a response before heading to the middle of the center of the tower and looking up, willing herself upwards as fast as the enchantment would let her go, ignoring Dagen’s sputtering of shock. They were already murmuring among themselves, and Beau felt that hot jolt of anger, of excluded hurt that she was so prone towards, despite the fact that she was still shivering. 

The way she stormed into her room and slammed the door shut behind her felt evocative of her teenage years, and that made her hate the situation even more, that the shadow of her former self could follow her here. She threw her coat and bags across the chair and small low table of the main room, sending the books there skittering to the ground. She felt a little bad about that, but it didn’t stop her from throwing her gloves and bracers at the training dummy in the middle room, kicking it over with one hard hook kick, the wood clattering onto the mats. The dull ache in her foot felt good, the anger felt good in its relative heat, but given even a moment to slow down, Beau felt herself begin to cool again to that bone-deep cold.

Already beginning to strip down, Beau entered the bed chamber, and was out of her shirt when she caught sight of herself in the mirror and all the air left her chest. All across her face and chest, the map of her veins stood out blue-black on her skin, interrupted only by the near-white scar tissue left by her deeper injuries. With a shaking finger, she traced over one of the thicker veins, running down the side of her neck and across her collarbone. It was cold to the touch. Had it been like that earlier? She supposed she couldn’t tell with how cold it had been outside.

Shaking her head, she resumed stripping down, trying to swallow the choked up feeling in her throat. She scrubbed herself vigorously, as if a good lather would get rid of the blue on her veins, erase whatever cosmic mistake she’d made to end up like this. Tears began to stream down her face as she scrubbed, reopening some of the bite wounds that Caduceus had healed to the point of scabbing over. The blood still came out red, but her veins were still blue, blue, blue.

Eventually, she slumped back against the edge of the tub, arms exhausted and anger spent. Despite having no interest in showing her face to her friends again that night, she hauled herself out of the bath and winced as the feeling of skin hitting air made her begin to shiver again in earnest. She mumbled a few choice curses at herself as she vigorously scrubbed her body dry again with a towel and stepped back into a set of clean clothes, taking care to double up on layers, as she had earlier and the day before. 

Gods, though, she was still so cold. She didn’t bother putting her wet hair up, only pulled on a second layer of socks and wrapped a spare blanket around her shoulders and retreated back to the main room where a fire was still roaring in the hearth, and her traveling things were still strewn about across the floor. Sitting down in front of the hearth, she luxuriated in the warmth, at the way it made the shivering stop for even a few seconds at a time. It was enough for her to start drifting off to sleep, despite her halfhearted efforts. She didn’t want to face the team that night anyways.

It was a knock at the door that woke her up. She jolted so hard in recoil that she smacked her head back against the flagstone facade of the hearth, yelping. The door flew open at the sound of her yelp, with Yasha leading the charge. Beau spotted Caleb just behind her, and what sounded like the rest of the party, just out of sight past the doorway.

“I’m fine, it’s f-f-fine, stop panicking,” Beau groaned, hating the way that the tremors were creeping back into her voice. She wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders and glared up at Yasha and Caleb, who were looking back and forth between her pitiful pile of blankets and layers on the floor, and the relative disarray of the things she’d strewn across the room in anger earlier. 

“You are not fine,” Caleb surprised her by being the one to speak up. “You are sick and we might have some idea of what it is.” Beau brightened despite herself, straightening up. 

“If you know what it is, we can f-fix it,” she said, stepping towards him. She began to shiver again, hard, as soon as she took a step away from the immediate warmth of the hearth and towards him and Yasha. Beau watched Caleb’s expression melt, uninhibited, as he looked miserably at her shivering in front of him.

“ _ Schiesse _ , Beauregard” he muttered, hands flying out, only hesitating for a moment before bringing them to her shoulders and rubbing quickly, as if such a mundane movement could bring warmth back into her body.

“What is it then? What do we d-do?” She asked, raising her shoulders up to lean more into the comforting gesture. 

“Well for a start, we are all staying in here tonight,” Caleb said. As if waiting for that cue, the rest of the Nein began to filter into her room. Beau felt a flush of embarrassment as she saw them note the evidence of her tantrum earlier, and just pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“That doesn’t sound like a cure to me,” she said. 

“It’s not,” Jester piped up. “We talked to Dagen and messaged some of his contacts in the area, and the Frigid Woe only has one know antidote, and we don’t have it yet. So we’re staying in here to try and keep it as warm as we can.” Caleb shot her a look, one that Beau had sent her way before more than once, the look that said  _ some tact would have been nice _ . Jester shrugged, and bumped against Beau’s shoulder with her own as a sign of reassurance.

“What Jester is saying, is that it’s an Aeorian illness. A manufactured one, actually,” Caleb said bitterly. “The mages of old Aeor were creating it to use as a chemical weapon against the gods themselves.”

“Well, that does make me feel a little better about my body totally screwing me over, if this stuff could take down gods,” Beau admitted, half smiling. Caleb did not return the smile, not that he usually did, but the refusal had a particular somberness to it that Beau didn’t really care for.

“We can’t cure you by magical means,” Caleb said. “But there is an antidote to be had. It’s somewhere… out there.” He practically winced as he said it, waving his arm back in a grand sweeping gesture that was clearly meant to represent the entirety of the icy wasteland of Aeor. 

“Can you cast  _ Locate _ and find it?” Beau asked. It helped a little, being in problem solving mode and being able to think about something beyond the numbness in her fingers and toes.

“We already have. But it’s a little ways away yet. We have a couple of days to travel before we can get to it. And that’s assuming we’re able to keep up our pace,” Caleb said warily. “But… just, tonight, try to get some sleep. We’re going to keep this chamber warm and we’ll be here to help if something goes poorly.” He patted Beau on the shoulder one last time before stepping back a few steps to give her a little space. He kept watching her though. She couldn’t fully process what was being said, and stood there stunned, trying to do the math on whether she was horrified or relieved.

“We didn’t mean to talk about you like you weren’t there, earlier,” Caduceus said, as he walked past, a heaping pile of blankets in his arm. “We just didn’t want you to have to worry about it. We were trying to be supportive, but it’s clear that didn’t come through the way we intended, and I’m sorry.” Beau felt a stab of guilt for her earlier actions, but just nodded.

“I… I’m sensitive to feeling like I’m not being heard. I overreacted, and I’m sorry too. But thank you. For the apology, I mean, that’s really nice of you,” Beau said, stumbling over the words because of the shivering and her general awkwardness resurfacing. Caduceus patted her on the top of the head, which should have felt patronizing, but honestly just felt warm and genuine, coming from Caduceus. His hand froze for a second though, once it had patted her head, fingers delicately pulling at her hair. Caleb was beside him, and looking at the top of her head with him in an instant.

“I just took a bath,” Beau said uncomfortably. “Don’t tell me that my hair is turning blue as well, I don’t think I could rock that look as well as Jester.” Jester giggled at that, but Yasha scowled.

“I think it would look very nice,” Yasha said, looking Beau up and down before approaching behind the concerned-looking pair still pawing at her hair. 

“So your hair was wet earlier?” Caduceus asked. The sneaky joy from Yasha’s compliment faded as she looked up, hoping Cad would meet her gaze.

“Yeah, I washed it,” she said, reluctantly pulling a hand out from beneath the blanket. She brought her hand up to the top of her head, where Caduceus was touching, and felt her hair.

It was frozen.

“Fuck,” Beau said quietly. She didn’t realize how bad her hand was shaking until she brought it back down and tucked her arm back under the blanket. Yasha was at her side now as she was trying to breathe deeply, trying to find some sort of calm to the panic that was rising again. The cure existed, but it was miles away. But her hair was already turning to ice. And she was shivering, she was so fucking cold and so fucking tired and her shivers were turning to coughs and wheezes and Yasha’s arms were like fire wrapping around her they were so warm.

She was sure that they ended up all settling into her chamber, that she fell asleep surrounded by her friends, in a warm room with a roaring hearth and good, thick blankets and hot food and drink, but she was no longer conscious, so she couldn’t be sure. 


	2. In My Mind I Am In Your Arms

Beau had gone into a panic, a fury of sorts before Yasha could do anything to stop it. Her stiff, frozen hair set her into a spiral, and Yasha could see the way her mind retreated inwards, the way she began to hyperventilate when the thoughts got to be too much for her. Yasha could only hope that Beau was too far gone by the time her shortened breath sent a cloud of frost into the air, clouding, crystalizing. She had just managed to get her arms secured around Beau’s waist when the monk finally succumbed to the exhaustion and fell into unconsciousness.

With strong arms and authoritative confidence, Yasha pulled Beau up into her arms, holding her bridal style against her chest, looking up at Caleb and Caduceus, daring them to say anything. They didn’t seem particularly focused on the interpersonal components of the dynamic in front of them, though, instead turning their attention to quickly readying some semblance of a bed for her on the ground in front of the hearth.

“This is bad, you guys,” Jester said quietly as she unfolded some quilts to lay down on the ground. “She looks really bad.” Yasha squeezed Beau tighter to her chest at this. She couldn’t refute it, not when those spiderwebs of dark blue were pulsing slow under Beau’s skin, her lips gone purple, and her body trembling against the internal cold, even in unconsciousness.

“We will fix her,” Yasha declared, speaking to the room despite her eyes never leaving Beau. There was a silence that met her statement, and when she looked up, she found the rest of the party staring at her. Their expressions were a mingled combination of pity and sadness, and Yasha looked back down again, immediately, unable to let herself accept their sorrow on her behalf. 

“ _ Ja _ , we will,” Caleb said. His face was drawn into a scowl and he was staring down at Beau without really looking at her, his thoughts far away. Yasha knew that his mind was probably running about three times faster than hers was, trying to find solutions and the fastest possible way to get Beau the antidote.

“Put her down in front of the fire at least, Yasha,” Caduceus suggested. Yasha felt herself nodding numbly and crossed the room to where Veth and Jester had already laid down some blankets and pillows on the ground in front of the fire. She took great care in laying down Beau close to the crackling flames, minding her head, guiding it onto a pillow. Once on the ground, Beau moaned a little and curled onto her side, facing the fire, still shivering. Yasha absently shushed her, pulling more of the blankets over on top of her. 

She recoiled a little in surprise when she realized Veth was squatted at her side, by Beauregard’s head. Yasha glanced over at her, and Veth nodded grimly back up at her before beginning to pull the blanket back from her neck, revealing her bare skin, blue-veined and ghastly. Without hesitating, Veth rubbed her hands together a couple of times before beginning to gently massage and press into the skin of her neck.

“What are you doing to her?” Yasha asked, almost embarrassed at how hoarse her voice was.

“Yeza would assist with a lot of ailments back in Felderwin, even as an alchemist,” Veth began, not looking up from her hands. “We treated a lot of people for a lot of different ailments. But when someone was hypothermic, we would increase bodily contact and apply warm compresses. Make sure the pulse was still there if they were unconscious.” Yasha didn’t know why Veth’s knowledge and practiced application surprised her, but it did. 

“What else can we do?” Yasha asked.

“A lot of what we’re already doing. Warm blankets, removing cold or wet clothes. Having them drink warm fluids. Increase bodily contact,” Veth said, pausing her motions to rest the back of one of her hands against Beau’s forehead. “Problem is, the cold was usually an external factor for the people I’ve treated, not something inside them. And she’s already so cold. If it gets any worse, I don’t know how we can expect her to keep moving during the day.” She looked back over at Caleb at this, almost resentfully, as if he was the one responsible for the distance between them and the antidote.

Yasha nodded at all of this, before contorting her way out of her coat, and then standing to kick off her boots. Caduceus and Caleb both looked up at her as she did so, and she stared right back as she pulled her shirt off over her head, leaving only her breastband, her top mostly bare. Caleb turned and averted his eyes somewhat bashfully, but Caduceus just looked at her with mild confusion.

“Caleb, can you make this room any warmer?” Yasha asked, sinking back down to the floor.

“I can have the cats bring in more braziers,” Caleb said, peeking back at her again, his face flushed pink. Yasha then turned to Beau, considering her. Beau wasn’t shy about her body, but with the new affliction, she’d become self conscious of the veins, and the way they stamped her, Yasha looked at Veth, who seemed to understand fully what Yasha was doing. She nodded to Yasha once, as if Yasha’s belief in her methods had given her some permission to take charge.

“Call up some of your cats, Caleb,” Veth said, getting up and turning away from Beau. “We’ll need them to bring up some warm compresses, and a kettle to keep a steady supply of hot water for the compresses and for tea.”

Yasha scooted up to lay down behind Beau, who was still shaking, curled up onto her side facing the fire. Hesitantly, she slipped under the blankets with her, and pulled up the two layers of shirts that Beau was wearing to expose the bare skin of her core. Yasha then scooted up and against Beau’s back, hissing a little as she pressed the skin of her stomach into the icy cold of Beau’s back. She wrapped one arm carefully around Beau’s waist, allowing her arm to lay on Beau’s side for maximum exposure. 

Gods she was so cold. But even with her skin that unearthly kind of frozen, the feeling of Beau’s stomach under her fingers, her spine pressed sharply into Yasha’s front… a new warmth bloomed in Yasha’s chest, and she couldn’t help but feel sorry that Beau wasn’t sharing in this moment with her, that it was something Yasha was doing to her rather than something the two of them were doing together.

Her hand was tracing lazy patterns on Beau’s stomach, when warm skin pressed into Yasha’s back. She jumped a little, surprised, but could smell the pastry on Jester’s breath behind her.

“Don’t worry. Veth explained it to us,” Jester said. “And I know what… who, Beau is to you. But we’re going to help take care of her, and take care of you too.” Yasha could feel the warm bareness of Jester’s stomach pressed against her back, except where her breastband was, and she smiled as Jester’s fingers reached up and gave her elbow a squeeze. 

A few minutes later, from above Beau’s head, Caduceus sat down, a tea tray rattling quietly as he placed it on a side table. He was wearing an undershirt, the pale blue skin of his arms dappled with pink freckles, and he looked unguarded this way, so much less official than the Caduceus in his green beetle armor and staff and the authority of the Wildmother.

“Veth is heating up some water for compresses, but I’ll be able to make some tea for her, right when she wakes up,” Caduceus explained. He reached a hand over to cup Beau’s cheek, and began to mouth a silent prayer. There was no visible magic effect to this prayer, but then again, Yasha supposed, not all of faith was in the magic it bestowed.

By the time he was done, Veth had brought over warm compresses, and with Yasha’s help, she coaxed one beneath each of Beau’s armpits, between her thighs, draped across her neck, and under Yasha’s hand, pressed to her stomach. 

“They will stay warm through the night,” Caleb’s voice said gently, over her shoulder. She hoped it would be enough. 

When Yasha picked up her head to turn around, she was surprised to find Jester and Fjord already asleep behind her, while Caduceus curled his lanky form just above Beau’s head. Caleb was settling in down by her feet, with a Veth-sized space left open between himself and the fire. They really were all going to do this, they were going to hunker down here and take care of their own. It made her heart swell. 

“She’s stopped shaking so much,” Yasha told Caleb helpfully, and a little of the worry permanently etched into his features seemed to lift by a fraction. While it didn’t alleviate her fear, it made it a little easier to bear, knowing that they were all sharing it with her.

“We will all be here,” Caleb said, nodding as Veth came to curl up at his side.

Yasha turned back onto her side, and smiled at the way Beau responded to her touch, pressing herself more firmly into Yasha’s shape, mumbling quietly. She allowed herself a quick prayer to the Stormlord, that Beau would be fixed quickly enough, that this cold could abate. There were so many things she still had to tell her.

* * *

Beau woke from her panic-attack-induced sleep in the earliest hours of the morning. She came to consciousness shaking, freezing from the unrelenting cold inside of her. But without even opening her eyes, she could feel the way the space around her was filled with warmer bodies and soft breathing. She was beneath several layers of blanket, and there was this delicious warmth being pressed to her stomach. If she hadn’t been so cold, she would have luxuriated in it, in the feeling of the slightest bit of warmth against her core. But she was cold. She was  _ so _ cold.

“Try not to move too much, she just got to sleep a few hours ago,” Caduceus’s low baritone voice rumbled from somewhere overhead. It took Beau another couple of addled moments to process that the warmth slung over her waist and pressed against her stomach was an arm and a hand. She didn’t need two guesses to know whose.

“Surprised she got to s-sleep with me shaking l-l-like this next to her,” Beau countered softly.

“Shaking didn’t start until after she was asleep,” he informed her matter-of-factly. She’d always liked that about Caduceus. He wasn’t afraid of the truth, and didn’t see the sense in someone else being scared of it either.

“W-w-well, I definitely feel colder,” Beau said, staring into the fire in front of her. She was barely a foot away from it, but it felt much further away from the way the heat affected her skin. 

“I’ll make you some tea,” Caduceus said amiably. There was a bit of rattling from behind her head, then the sound of liquid hitting the bowl of a porcelain cup. Moments later, there was a steaming cup of tea being held in front of her face. “Tilt your head up for me.”

Beau did as she was told, and the feeling of the tea slipping down her throat was incredibly gratifying, if only for the few moments it warmed her chest. She nodded to Caduceus for another sip, and quickly drained the whole cup before letting her head drop back down onto her pillow on the floor. She shuddered at the feeling of the cold slithering back into the muscles and bones of her chest, wanting to cry just a little at how short-lived the relief was. 

The arm slung around her waist pulled her closer again, a soft sighing syllable being breathed against the back of her neck, her own name on Yasha’s lips, before she seemed to slip back into sleep.

“How long until everyone w-wakes up?” Beau asked quietly. Her voice was hoarse, despite the tea, and it stung a bit to speak.

“Oh less than an hour now, it should be soon. We’re going to try to cover a lot of ground again today,” Caduceus answered. Beau felt an involuntary little whine leave her throat at the thought of leaving the tower. She could barely keep her teeth from chattering here, in front of a roaring fire, under blankets and with Yasha’s warm body pressed into her back, and the thought of returning to the cold, unforgiving tundra was unbearable.

Caduceus hummed a little at the sound she made, and she felt a large, warm firbolg hand press into her cheek. It was nearly as warm as Yasha’s hand on her core, and it soothed her fear, if only for a moment.

She couldn’t fully bring herself to think coherently. If she had been able to, she was sure she would have felt that ugly, rising shame return as she practically mewled into the warmth of her friend’s hand like some days old kitten pulled from its mother’s side. She should have felt that shame, that pressing panic that surfaced whenever everyone’s eyes were on her in a moment of fear, when she made a mistake or started to cry.

Desperately, she wished she had the willpower to pull away from Caduceus, from Yasha, the strength to sit up and yawn and pardon herself to go have her morning workout in the other room, to come out sweating and healthy and fulfilled. She wanted everything to be fine again. More than anything, she wished she did not need them so badly. It was a vulnerable place to be, and every time she had tried to walk this tightrope of trust before, it had given out beneath her when she had taken that first step, that leap of faith. She did not want to test this trust yet, not even after a full year of traveling with them, of nearly dying for them. It was not something she was sure she could endure.

“We’re not here because we have to be,” Caduceus said mildly, as if he could hear the panic starting to swirl in her head. “We’re here because we care about you, and we want to help you.” He had leaned down now, his pale pink hair and kind face now in her frame of vision.

“I wish I c-c-could understand and believe, C-Caduceus,” Beau said, the desperation in her voice plain as day.

“I know,” he said, nodding his head. “It’s not going to get any less true while you work on that. We’re here for you, Beau.” She felt her throat close a little with a confused sadness.

“Don’t make me cry, the tears will f-f-freeze,” Beau said shakily, trying to laugh. Whatever tears might have started to fall, were caught and wiped away by practiced hands. There were a few moments of silence then, and Beau found herself focusing again on the body pressed so intently against hers. 

“She hasn’t left your side all night,” Caduceus said conversationally. He didn’t miss a thing. Beau could feel the gentle breaths on the back of her neck, and knew he’d seen the longing telegraphed on her face.

“She’s… I don’t deserve her, Cad,” Beau said quietly. It was funny, how much easier it was to meet his eye when she said this. He cocked his head, and took a short while to think about that. The silence never felt awkward with him, and Beau focused on her breathing, trying to keep from shaking Yasha awake.

“I don’t think that’s really for you to decide,” he said finally. “I think that if you care for her, then you should trust her. Trust her judgement.”

Beau felt her self-deprecating arguments die on her lips.

“I… I don’t want to hurt her or do s-something wrong,” Beau said finally. Was that fear in her voice? She had become so unguarded under Caduceus’s questioning, his logic. Or maybe it was the cold in her veins. Or the woman wrapped around her like a second skin.

“You can never guarantee that you’re not going to make a mistake. But I think that’s very different from the question of whether or not you deserve someone else’s love and affection,” Caduceus said simply. 

“She matters so much to me, C-Cad,” Beau said, her voice barely a whisper.

“You should tell her that, then,” he replied. As usual, his voice was inflected with warmth and a deep affection, but an intolerance for silly arguments. Beau huffed a little, snuggling a little tighter against Yasha’s chest, feeling the other woman’s arm tighten around her minutely as she did so. There was the sound of silver clinking on porcelain, and then of more tea being poured.

“I’m going to clean myself up in my rooms,” Caduceus said finally, rising from where he’d been sitting by Beau’s head. “Yasha, I’ve poured you both some more tea, make sure Beau drinks hers.” Beau felt the body behind her freeze, breath caught in her chest and her mind starting racing at the implications.

“Thank you, Caduceus,” Yasha rumbled, voice thick with sleep, or perhaps something else. Beau’s eyes went wide, and she lost control of the shivers she’d been desperately trying to suppress, shaking again and letting out a small whine of frustration. Yasha made quiet shushing sounds against the back of her neck, her hand tracing over the thick scar running vertically across Beau’s chest.

“Try to keep breathing deeply, Beau,” Yasha said, holding her just a little more tightly.

“I d-d-didn’t mean for you t-to hear,” Beau said frantically. “I’m s-sorry, I don’t w-want you to be uncomfortable-”

“Please, just relax,” Yasha interrupted, her voice a little firmer now. Beau did as she was asked, biting hard on her lower lip to keep words from slipping out, shaking still, mind racing. She’d been talking about Yasha like she wasn’t even there. Hadn’t she just thrown a fit at the Nein for doing the same the night before? She was a filthy hypocrite. And now Yasha would move away from her, unravel from her place at Beau’s back and it would be what she deserved for pining over her like someone with no agency of her own. 

She braced herself for Yasha to move away, but the separation never came. Yasha just began to hum, quietly, the tune a little warbly and off-kilter, but immensely comforting, and distantly familiar, the way that a lullaby could be, even if you’d never heard it before. Beau felt the racing of her heart slow down as the minutes passed, leaving her frozen body even more exhausted and spent than it had been the night before.

“Yasha…” Beau said finally, reveling in the feeling of being able to take a long, deep breath without her core contracting with shivers. Yasha stopped her humming, and Beau could have sworn she felt lips pressed into the back of her neck. She was sure of it when Yasha spoke up, breath warm on her skin.

“Beauregard. I don’t… you don’t have to be sorry for what you said. I’m sorry for listening in when you thought I was asleep. I just… you matter so much to me, too. I really… I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens.” Yasha said, her voice so low that Beau was sure that any other eavesdroppers in the room couldn’t hear. She blinked, trying to process the words, trying to talk herself out of the hope they made her feel.

“Something’s already k-kind of happened,” Beau said, trying to stay light. 

“And it scares me,” Yasha said. “I’m so scared that we won’t fix it in time and I’ll lose you.” Hearing it in such frank terms made Beau hiccup a litte, fear clenching her windpipe. 

“Don’t be scared f-for me,” Beau said. “I’m tough, and Caleb and Jester will get us there f-f-fast enough. Don’t worry.” There was a pause for a moment, then a hoarse whisper.

“You don’t get to choose who loves you, Beauregard.”

At this, Beau pulled Yasha’s hand off of her stomach and with great effort, turned onto her back to allow her to look up at Yasha’s face. The other woman had propped her head up on one hand, the other drifting gently over Beau’s midriff still. But her eyes were burning fiercely, and it almost hurt to look at her directly. 

“And do you, Yasha?” Beau asked, bringing one hand up to interlace her fingers with Yasha’s noting the way that Yasha suppressed a shiver at the contact with Beau’s hand. “Love me?” Yasha just stared at her for a moment, her thumb brushing lazily across the back of Beau’s hand, suddenly shy as she gathered the words.

“If you’ll let me,” Yasha said finally, brow furrowed and expression adorably worried. Beau felt herself smile, shaking almost fully suppressed as joy spread, alight in her chest, her arms, her legs, her mouth.

“I love you, too,” Beau said quietly. Yasha leaned down just then, and laid the chastest of kisses on Beau’s dry lips, only lasting a second, before she straightened up and smiled. 

“That’s settled then,” Yasha said. “Now come and drink your tea.”

As Yasha moved to get the mugs of tea that Caduceus had left them, Beau slowly sat up, keeping her back to the fire and bundling herself more completely in the blankets. Looking around, she felt a pang of affection for the Mighty Nein as she saw them all tucked in close around her, Veth and Caleb at her feet, and Fjord and Jester cuddled up next to where Yasha had been laying. They all looked hot in their sleep, stripped down to undershirts and underclothes, Caleb’s face pink with warmth, and a few beads of sweat gathering on Fjord and Jester’s foreheads. A heavy and somber voice in her head wondered how she would ever repay them this debt, and Beau swallowed it down as she looked back over at Yasha, who was holding out a steaming mug.

The rest of the Nein roused relatively quickly after this, especially when Caduceus came back in and left the door to the interior of the tower open, light and fresh air pouring in. None of them seemed particularly bothered by the heat and their proximity as they awoke, each of them glancing quickly over to Beau, who gave them a chattering smile from beneath her blankets. They smiled, too big and too brightly back at her, showing their fear in their eyes and the ways they excused themselves in pairs to go and clean up before breakfast, whispering to each other when they thought she wasn’t watching them.

Yasha turned down Beau’s offer to let her use the adjoining bath, citing that Beau had actually kept her quite cool overnight. She had, though, helped Beau dress as warmly as she could without encumbering her movement too severely. 

When they met up with the rest of the Nein in the salon, Yasha’s hand at Beau’s elbow, Jester shot Beau a knowing look, but quickly turned back to her pastry before Beau could get anything else out of her. Caleb slid a steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of her as she sat down at his side, and she leaned slightly into his side in thanks. To his credit, Caleb took the contact in stride, leaning back and bumping his head gently against hers before nodding at the oatmeal.

“Eat it while it’s still hot,  _ schwester _ ,” he said quietly. “We will be flying as much as possible today, but you will need your strength for any of the terrain we will need to take on foot.” Beau felt her eyebrows raise at the affectionate way he called her  _ sister _ , but she leaned in and began to eat. Her hands were clumsy with cold, and she felt like a child as smears of oatmeal dripped to her chin from her shakiness, and it only took half the bowl for her to drop her spoon in frustration, shaking hand raising up to try and wipe her chin with a deep sigh.

Beau could feel Yasha’s eyes on her, the eyes of the rest of her friends, and if she could have produced warmth anymore, she was sure her face would have been burning with embarrassment. A loud slurping noise caught her attention, and she whipped her gaze to her left, where Caleb wasn’t looking at her at all, but was eating his own oatmeal sloppily, using his hands rather than his spoon. She stared at him for a moment, and she was sure that the rest of them were staring too. When he finally looked over at her and saw her confusion, he shrugged and continued to eat with his hands, oatmeal coating his chin and spilling onto the table.

Across the way, Fjord dropped his spoon too, and began eating in a similar fashion, and Beau felt a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“It’s not fair, I’m already eating my pastries with my hands,” Jester bemoaned, as one by one, the rest of the Nein began eating their hot oats or porridge in messy handfuls. 

“Oh, well, here you go,” Fjord said demurely, and he slapped a small oatmeal beard onto Jester’s chin with a spark in his eyes. She grinned back at him, and proceeded to eat a sugar-powdered doughnut contentedly.

Beau looked back down at her oats, then over to Caleb. With her free left hand under the table, she reached over and squeezed his knee, and he, without even looking back at her, nodded his understanding, his dismissal of her thanks. She ate the rest of the oatmeal with her hands, and for a short while, she felt warmer again.

* * *

The moment they left the tower, Beau felt her stomach sink. Her entire body was shaking, teeth clenched together to keep them from chattering loudly. 

Caleb had explained their plan to get two or three days travel down to one and a half, and while it would take minimal effort on her part, they were going to be out in the cold for a full day, and there was no guarantee that they would traverse the tundra safely. 

Jester would polymorph herself and Fjord into giant eagles, and Caleb would do the same to himself. Caduceus would cast one of his highest level spells immediately, a spell called  _ Find the Path _ , that would direct them to the closest lab, where the antidote was supposed to be held. Dagen would be carried by Jester, while Caleb carried Veth and Caduceus, leaving Fjord to carry Beau and Yasha. 

When they landed after the first round of polymorph, and they only had the ability to transform two creatures at a time, they would rebalance the load before continuing to fly. It wouldn’t be particularly fast, but being able to bypass some tricky terrain would ultimately speed up the travel, Beau was told. There was still fear in the pit of her stomach despite the reassurances of her party, and their confidence that this would work. 

Stepping out of the cave where the tower had been, Beau had to steel herself to keep from crying out. Yasha’s hand was in hers, but she had lost feeling in her hands before they’d had to separate. Still, she gave Yasha a pained smile of reassurance before they took off into the sky. 

Their travel that day was a blur for Beau. Whenever they were up in the air, she put on her darkvision goggles, if only to prevent tears from flowing and freezing to her face. Any down time between flight or hiking, she was prodded into walking small laps with Veth or Yasha or Jester, to stay moving. She did this with a grim sort of resolve, the dizzy thudding in her ears reminding her that the effort to pump blood was becoming increasingly taxing on her body. She didn't speak much. No one pressed her to.

By the time they put up the tower that night, Beau was ready to drop, and probably only stayed upright because of Yasha’s arm braced around her back and armpit, holding her up limply against her body. She wanted to say something, but found her lips thick and uncooperative, so she just squeezed Yasha back.

Beau resisted any suggestions that she take another hot bath that night, and the rest of the Nein acquiesced, if only because they might have shared her fear that the water would freeze around her. She took soup and tea at dinner mutely and only felt her muscles begin to unclench when they returned back to her room, and Yasha’s body wrapped back around her. She realized vaguely that she hadn’t had a thought in quite some time, but that it was nice that she was having thoughts again and they were about Yasha.

“You’re so warm, Yash,” Beau said fondly. She distantly registered the way her words slurred, slightly, lisping and tripping over certain words.

“And you are even colder than before,” Yasha said. There might have been panic in her voice, if Beau thought she might be prone to feelings like panic. Warm compresses were returned to their comforting places around her neck and against her core, and Beau felt her consciousness slipping away with a quickness that would have been alarming if it hadn’t been such a relief.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for continuing to read this self-indulgent little fic! Poor Beau can't end a chapter awake and conscious, it seems!
> 
> Some notes on mechanics and functionality: Yes, the polymorphed eagles would have been pretty slow while so encumbered. Keeping them polymorphing was more of a bye so I didn't have to explain Beau being able to keep on moving in a bad state.   
> Regarding the use of Find the Path: I know there are mechanics of this spell that would have made it unlikely for Cad to be able to cast it on a place they hadn't been before. But, y'know... C R E A T I V E L I B E R T I E S! :)
> 
> As always thank you for reading, please drop me a note if you enjoyed it, or if you have feedback or stuff you'd like to see more of! Next chapter should be up some time next week!


	3. Not A Fever, It's a Freezer

If the Nein had been reserved and worried before, they were in an outright panic when the next morning, they struggled to wake Beau up at all. She’d fallen asleep like she’d been drugged the night before after barely choking down a mug of soup. The dark blue veins had remained on her face, but after a day of traveling in Arctic cold, the whole of her skin had a greyish-blue tint to it, and the bags under her eyes were darkening by the minute, a deep indigo to match the veins still tattooed across her skin. 

While she’d been shivering as she fell asleep, Yasha woke up with Beau’s body cold and still under her hands. It had taken her only seconds to sit up, jackknifing and waking Jester and Caleb with the movement. The panic threatened to swallow her whole. All she could think was  _ no.  _

“Beau. Beauregard, wake up,” Yasha begged, starting to shake one freezing cold shoulder, rolling Beau onto her back in the light of the hearth. It only took seconds before Jester and Caleb were at her side, the rest of the Nein rising bleary-eyed behind them.

“Beau!” Jester said, her voice more shrill than Yasha’s. Jester’s hands moved in a rapid, deft pattern that Yasha recognized as a healing spell, despite its relative ineffectiveness against Beau’s affliction. Caleb was wordless, his mouth moving open and shut as he began fumbling through his component pouch with hands violently shaking. 

“Feel for a pulse or breath,” Veth commanded, eyes locked on Yasha as she staggered to her feet behind Caleb. Yasha’s hands were too shaky and unsure to hover, so she brought her hands up to the sides of Beau’s neck, right where her jaw met her throat. For several long moments there was nothing, and Yasha could feel herself crumbling under the weight of the implications. That Beau had died in the night, in her arms, and Yasha simply hadn’t noticed.

But then the weak thrum of a pulse beat beneath her fingertips, and Beau gave a small gasp, eyes cracking open for only a moment before she seemed to slip back into unconsciousness. Relief flooded Yasha’s system, and she found herself keeling over Beau’s chest, something between a heaving sigh and a sob escaping her throat as she tucked her chin in the angle between Beau’s neck and shoulder, casting her  _ healing hands _ in a desperate plea for her to come back to consciousness.

“It’s okay, Yasha, we’ve got her, we’ve got time,” Jester said over her shoulder, warm hands coming down to gently rub her back. Yasha shuddered at the reassurance, the overwhelming fear refusing to back down and allow her spiking adrenaline to subside.

“We have to go,” Caleb was hissing behind her. “We’ve got a full rest in, we have to go now.” His urgency and the unrelenting panic in his voice felt more aligned with Yasha’s mindset, even as Fjord and Jester chided him with gentle, calming words. 

“We’ll pack up, we have to wake up Dagen and Caduceus has to cast  _ Find the Path _ , it’ll just be a few minutes, Caleb.”

“She is  _ dying _ , Fjord,” Caleb said miserably.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Fjord snapped back. The pain in his voice was less panicked, but no less sharp. “I’m not trying to stop you, I’m trying to make sure we can get there as fast as possible.”

There was silence enough to tell Yasha that the tension had abated slightly, in their shared pursuit of the greater good. Not wanting to waste any time, she pulled Beau up into her lap, holding her chest-to-chest, with Beau’s head drooping limply over Yasha’s shoulder. 

“Nnn… ‘asha…?” Beau’s voice was thick and slurred, but Yasha felt electrified by the sound of her, the proof of life still showing. Her skin seemed to have taken on a slightly more human color from the healing magic that was coursing through her. She had a feeling it wouldn’t last long.

“You’re okay, Beau, you’re okay, lovely,” Yasha said, speaking loudly and clearly enough for the rest of the party to clock Beau’s semi-consciousness. “We’re going to get going soon, get you fixed up. Can you sit up if I get you to the chair?”

“Is… col’er now?”

“Yes, Beau,” Yasha said, lifting Beau up, one arm wrapped around her back and the other around her thighs, getting her to the chair closest to the fire. “I’m going to start putting more of your clothes on you, to keep you warm.”

“I’m getting Dagen,” Fjord said quietly to the room. “Outside in five, we’re leaving.”

“I’m going out now to start the ritual cast,” Caduceus said quickly, brushing his hand across the top of Beau’s head as he passed, the contact emitting a warm glow of what was sure to be more healing magic. Beau’s eyes opened a crack at this, but rolled dizzily in their sockets, seemingly unable to find focus.

Yasha was pulling another layer over Beau’s head, when she tried to catch Beau’s eye, and took a deep inhale through her nose. Beau’s pupils were nothing more than pinpricks in the dark room, the blue of her irises almost entirely erasing the tiniest of black dots in the center. Veth, who was holding her steady, seemed to have caught the same thing, and began to untie a spare strip of cloth from her own sash.

“Beau, I’m going to wrap your eyes right now. I think that light is only going to hurt your eyes and make you more uncomfortable, and this is going to help, alright?” Veth asked. Yasha was surprised that she fully waited until Beau gave a drunken-sounding affirmative before she began to tie the long strip of fabric around her eyes like a blindfold. Beau waved a single arm weakly in protest, missing Veth’s hand entirely. 

“What is it, Beau?” Yasha asked gently, catching her hand where it was still limply thrashing.

“Need… to see… ‘asha,'' Beau said, the words slipping slow and heavy through clearly-numbed lips. Veth didn’t meet Yasha’s gaze, but stood down for a moment, sash held uncertainly in her hands.

“I’m right here,” Yasha said. “I’ll be holding on to you the whole time. Veth is helping, with the blindfold, we don’t want you to hurt more when we get into the sunlight.”

Beau managed to steady her gaze under half-lidded eyes long enough to stare at Yasha. Even her gaze felt cold and dull, despite her fear and desperation.

“M’kay,” Beau assented, closing her eyes. “Don’... don’ leab.”

“I won’t leave,” Yasha assured her. She nodded curtly to Veth who began to wrap the cloth back around Beau’s eyes, quickly, but more gently than before. Once it was secure, Beau’s head drooped forward again, forehead resting in the spot where Yasha’s neck and shoulder met. Yasha hummed as she leaned her cheek against Beau’s head, and with Veth’s help holding Beau up, Yasha pulled on her own coat and boots, only a little awkwardly. 

The quiet moans of discomfort and complaint had quieted by the time Yasha straightened up with Beau in her arms, completely dead weight. She was only reassured by the cold breath that hit her neck in inconsistent intervals, and the way Veth reached up to give her arm a squeeze.

“We’ll get her there on time, even if we have to split up, we’ll get there fast enough,” Veth said. Her voice was steely, and while it seemed to be devoid of fear, Yasha caught a glance of Veth scrubbing her hands over her eyes before straightening her spine again to leave the tower.

The rest of them were waiting outside, already in a flurry of activity and discussing logistics. Caduceus was sitting and chanting some meditative prayer that would hopefully finish with him telling them that they were closer than ever, closer than they thought.

Fjord scowled when Yasha carried a blindfolded Beau out of the tower door.

“Why is she blindfolded?” Fjord asked. The fear spiking in his voice was almost enough to bring Yasha out of her own misery to focus on the pity she felt for the half-orc, watching his hand come up to brush the side of Beau’s face.

“Light sensitivity,” Veth said. “Her eyes were straining enough against the light in the dark room, going out onto the snow would’ve been torture.” Fjord’s spine went straighter than before, if that was even possible, and he nodded stiffly. Though Veth and Fjord’s relationship was adversarial at the best of times, their shared fear, and care, seemed to be enough to bridge that chasm for now. 

Yasha thought numbly about how that should have scared her more. She supposed she was already as scared as she could have been, Beau’s dead weight hanging limp in her arms. On another day, she would have felt something, as each of the Nein came over to touch Beauregard’s cheek or kiss her forehead, following these gentle touches with a hand on Yasha’s shoulder, or a knowing look. But Beau was so still in her arms, she couldn’t let herself feel the pity and the fear of the others. If she took on another ounce of fear or preemptive sadness, she wouldn’t be able to move, and Beau needed her to move.

Beau needed her.

“‘asha?” Beau’s voice came out cracked and hoarse.

“I’m still here,” Yasha said into her ear, pushing her cheek against Beau’s.

“Mmm…” Beau hummed contentedly. “Shouldn’ ‘ave let you.” Yasha froze for a moment, trying to work out the meaning behind Beau’s words.

_ “And do you, Yasha? Love me?” _

_ “If you’ll let me.” _

The memory of two nights ago hit Yasha like a blow to the gut, viscerally painful. How scared Beau had been of hurting her, of how Yasha deserved someone better. It had hurt to hear Beau’s shivering voice profess those doubts before, and it hurt twice as hard to hear her slur through a confirmation that she believed her doubts had been founded after all. 

“I’m not asking for your permission anymore, Beau,” Yasha said quietly, her cheek still pressed flush against Beau’s. 

“Tha’s… nice,” Beau said. Yasha could feel Beau’s cheek contract into a stiff smile against hers, and she allowed herself the comfort of squeezing Beau tightly to her chest in an embrace. Despite the small cavern being full, none of the party were looking at them, trying to give them some sort of privacy before they had to venture out into the gently falling snow. The precipitation had never seemed so dangerous before. 

“We’re only a few hours away,” Caduceus said, breaking the tense silence of the group. “Only two or three turns at polymorph to get there.”

“But we can only polymorph three eagles once,” Jester said. Yasha tried not to wince at the hopelessness in her voice.

“Then we split the group,” Caleb said. Yasha felt her eyes snap up to meet Caleb’s before glancing around uncertainly at the party. Their rule was to never split up, and in a place as dangerous as Eiselcross? The rest of them seemed equally unsettled by the possibility, except perhaps Veth. Yasha thought back to several minutes ago, when Veth had planted the seed of possibility in her head, that they might split up. It seemed that Veth and Caleb had already been planning contingencies. 

“We don’t know what’s going to be waiting in those labs, we can’t just send Yasha, Caduceus and Beau into whatever that is,” Fjord said. A little of the tightness in Yasha’s chest released at the acknowledgement that she would be staying with Beau, whatever the situation.

“Dagen, you know the ruin we’re moving towards, don’t you?” Caleb said, turning towards their guide who was taking a deep swig of whatever antifreeze liquor was in his flask.

“Mhmm, sure do,” Dagen said. “Could get us there all the way just trekking in three or four hours.”

“So if we flew for an hour and covered half of the distance, you could lead a second party behind those who continued to fly? And you’d reach the ruin in another two hours?” Caleb asked. He seemed unmoved by the party’s concern about splitting, and glancing down at the blue streaked face of Beau in her arms, Yasha found herself siding with him.

“Sure,” Dagen said. “By that logic, we’d only be an hour or so behind you.”

“ _ Gut _ . Then here is what we do,” Caleb said. “We all fly to cover half the distance. Jester, you will carry Dagen and Fjord, and will also cast on Veth, who will carry Caduceus while I carry Beauregard and Yasha. When we land, Jester, you will cast on Veth again, and she will carry Caduceus, who can continue to direct us towards the ruin while I continue to carry Yasha and Beauregard.”

Yasha could see the protest on Jester’s lips, the fear of being left behind, only to arrive to find out they’d been too late. But Fjord put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and she remained quiet, listening.

“Veth and I will finish the flight to the next ruin. Caduceus will lead us through the ruin to the antidote. If we encounter some large beast or trap, we shall wait for you to catch up to us, with the knowledge that we have at least gotten Beauregard out of the snow and wind. If we  _ can _ make it through the ruin, we will mark a trail for you to follow behind us so that you can find us when we arrive.”

Yasha found herself nodding along as Caleb laid out the plan. It seemed so much more simple when it was laid out that way. She was able to visualize a world in which they would succeed, and Beauregard would return to her. That was the world she wanted to pursue and follow.

“I like this plan,” Yasha said decisively. The look that Jester gave her might have hurt more if it hadn’t been so unimportant to her current priorities. “We need to get her out of the elements as fast as possible.”

Jester looked deflated, and Fjord a little worried, but the group seemed to uneasily come to the agreement that this was the best way to proceed. Yasha approached Caleb, but her voice felt stuck in her throat, and she just opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, Beau hugged tightly to her chest.

“You two can ride on my back,” Caleb said softly. “It will perhaps be a little ungainly, but it shouldn’t slow me down.” He had seen the fear in Yasha’s eyes, the fear of losing Beau while she was out of reach, in a giant eagle’s talons, and not knowing, not realizing until then landed on the ground. It was the not knowing that would be the worst. Yasha just nodded her wordless thanks, and tried to get her coat and shawl around Beau’s bundled up form. 

They mounted Caleb’s eagle form a little awkwardly, and Yasha hesitated before keeping Beau held in her arms the same way, so she would be riding backwards, her face to Yasha’s chest and her back to the beating wind. It was the closest she felt she could get to keeping Beau swaddled up against her, the safest she could be. 

It also meant that as they flew, Yasha had nothing to do but stare at Beau’s unconscious face. Her expression was one of grim discomfort, frozen in place by the cold rictus of the blood and muscles under her skin. But as they flew on, Yasha could see Beau’s skin getting notably paler, as if whatever lifeblood was inside of her was slowing to a dull, slurried slog. But her heart beat on under Yasha’s hands, and her breath puffed out, cold and short, often enough to keep Yasha’s pure panic at bay.

When Caleb started to descend for the landing, Yasha pulled Beau’s face flush against her chest again.

“We’re halfway there, Beau,” she said, speaking into the ear pressed into her cheek. “If you want to wake up and say goodbye for now to Jester, now would be a really good time to put that stubbornness to good use.” If Beau had heard her, she gave no indication.

They’d barely hit the snow and dismounted when Caleb snapped back to his human self and was anxiously peering around Yasha, the fear evident in his face.

“How is she?” He asked, his voice husky and low. Yasha heard the real question buried in his words.  _ Did she make it? Did she pass away into the astral sea while carried on my back? _ And Yasha’s heart pulled a little. It was easy, when you loved somebody, to think that your relationship was the only one that mattered. Or at least the relationship that mattered the most. But looking at the gaunt, drawn face of Caleb, a man who had practically become Beau’s brother by way of badgering, arguing, and a deep and resounding friendship, Yasha knew otherwise. 

“She is not waking, but her pulse is still there, still strong enough,” Yasha said. Caleb nodded with a faraway look in his eyes. It might have been relief, but really, there was no space for relief, not yet.

“Yasha?” Jester was rushing over, and Yasha realized, retrospectively, how terrifying it must have looked to see Yasha still holding Beau’s limp body, Caleb looking at her with fear.

“She’s still here,” Yasha reassured her, louder this time to save herself the pain of having to clarify for each of them in turn. Jester still crowded her way over and reached up her blue hands, bare against the cold, touching the sides of Beau’s blindfolded face and clearly casting more healing. 

“I know it’s not much,” Jester said, perhaps catching the lack of hope in Yasha’s expression. “But I think it helps a little. I really hope it helps at least a little.” She sniffled now, and Fjord came up and put a hand to her face too. A blue light emerged from his hand, and Yasha smiled a little at the largely symbolic gesture of his casting  _ Lay on Hands _ . 

“You did more than I could,” Fjord said to Jester. His voice wasn’t bitter, not exactly, but there was a heavy note of regret that Yasha felt connected to. The regret that there simply wasn’t more to be done. That there was only one cure, and everything else felt like a comforting kind of hospice.

“You’ll get there on this next leg if the winds hold,” Dagen said gruffly. “We won’t be far behind ya neither, so don’t go saying goodbyes.” Yasha wondered how many he had lost out here in his time. The haggard look on his face told her it likely didn’t matter. They all were their own person once, and the loss hadn’t gotten easier.

“Okay then,”Jester said, sniffling again, but looking up in a mask of her normal brightness. “Are you ready, Veth?”

* * *

As they kicked into the air for the second time, Yasha kept Beau’s face bundled into her chest, under her cloak her breath coming faster now, as if her own breathing could keep Beau afloat long enough. She huddled down low on Caleb’s eagle back, only really looking up when he let out a warning screech. They were likely close to the ruin, but Caduceus, riding ahead on eagle Veth, hadn’t started to put on the brakes. Curious, Yasha chanced a look down over Caleb’s shoulder and squinted down, surprised that she saw anything more than just white. 

There were, scattered in odd intervals, icy monoliths beneath them. At first there was only one every quarter mile. But as Veth began a slow descent ahead of them, signalling their approach to the ruin, the pillars of ice appeared with increasing frequency. Yasha returned her focus to Beau, so still and unmoving in her arms, holding tight to her as Caleb began to pump his wings in a braking fashion, bringing them down into the powdery snow. 

Beau did not wake. Veth and Caleb dropped their eagle forms as soon as their passengers were off their backs, Caleb quickly summoning  _ Create Flame _ and holding it as near to Beau as he dared.

“Oh no,” Caduceus said, his voice lower, more emotional than usual. Caleb, Veth, and Yasha whipped around, and Caduceus stepped back from where he stood, examining one of the ice pillars. Except now, Yasha could see it was not a pillar. It was the icy figure of a human man, in the process of falling to his knees. His face was one of blank hopelessness. He was frozen solid.

“Oh  _ no _ ,” Veth said, her voice breathless. Looking up, Yasha could see there were at least five more between them and an open cave mouth, fifty yards away, all different sizes and poses, but all undoubtedly looking longingly towards the cave.

“The others,” Caleb said softly, taking the chance and bringing the flame in his hand closer to Beau in hopes of bringing the color in her face closer to that of the living than it was to the icy statues around them. 

“We have to get inside, now,” Yasha said miserably, pushing past Veth and Caleb trying not to look at the frozen bodies that were curled up on the ground, having died in their sleep, unable to make it the last stretch to the ruin. She couldn’t bring herself to think about them at that point, not when it was still undecided whether or not Beau would join them. She heard the huffing of breath behind her, and she allowed them to catch up as she entered the cavern. 

“It’s not far,” Caduceus said, his eyes following a path that none of them could see. “I don’t think it’s going to be too deep into the ruin.”

“We can only hope,” Caleb said darkly. Yasha felt a flash of anger at him then, at his pessimistic resignation, at his openness to the possibility of Beau dying here. But the flash was short-lived, and gave way to Yasha’s weary determination again as she watched Veth reach up and squeeze Caleb’s hand. 

They followed Caduceus down hallways that were pitched on an angle, glassy with ice. Yasha tried her best not to fall, with Veth spotting her from behind to straighten her out as best she could. Once she thought she was in the clear, she took a long step, trying to make up for the time she lost, only to hit a patch of black ice on the smooth floor surface, slipping and hitting the ground.

“Shit! Are you okay?” Veth asked quickly, coming up behind her on fast, nimble legs. “Is Beau okay?” Yasha groaned a little, but nodded. Her head had smacked into the floor with some speed, but she was fairly certain she’d been able to catch most of the fall for Beau. That was, until Veth hissed and string of explicatives so long and foul, that even Caleb spun around in surprise.

“What? What is it?” He asked, closing the gap between them. Caduceus turned around, but stayed where he was, eyes locked onto the path as if he was afraid he would lose it.

“Her hand,” Veth said. Yasha’s eyes whipped down to Beau, and to her arm that had slipped out of her hold, that had been hanging limp against Yasha’s side.Though gloved, it was impossible not to see the distinction between the rigidity of Beau’s thumb and first two fingers and the loose dangling of the last two fingers. Before Yasha could stop her, Veth was pulling off Beau’s glove. 

When it came free of Beau’s hand, there was a horrifying moment of clarity, one that Yasha never wanted to feel again. Beau’s hand was frosted over, coated in a thin layer of ice, and it was missing two fingers. Veth looked in a panic back to the glove in her hand, and Yasha realized in that moment that the fingers weren’t missing, just entirely snapped off and stuck to the inside of the glove.

“Oh no,” Caleb said softly. “Oh no, we have to go  _ now _ .” The fear in his eyes was rekindled, and Yasha felt the same painful flame rise inside her once more. If she hadn’t felt it herself, she wouldn’t have believed that she could be so afraid. Beau was turning to ice. The final stage. Yasha stood quickly, found her balance, and with Veth and Caleb beside her, Beau in her arms, and Caduceus waiting at the door ahead, she began to run.


	4. We'll All Arrive in Heaven Alive

Yasha ran, hyper aware of the stiffening body in her arms. She only stopped when she would reach a fork or a seeming dead end, and even then she could feel her face work into a snarl as Caduceus caught up, running his absolute fastest, face haggard with the exertion. 

“Wait! Wait,” Caduceus begged, after catching her at the fourth fork in the road. Yasha whipped around on him, and despite his long and lanky height, it felt like she was towering over him. 

“What?” Yasha asked. Despite all her barely-tempered rage simmering ill-concealed beneath the surface, Caduceus didn’t seem particularly cowed by Yasha. If they made it through this, she’d have to remember to thank him for that. For his eternally cool temper. 

“It’s there,” Caduceus said, pulling back. To Yasha’s eyes, he was gesturing to a wall iced over, almost indiscernible from any other. But Veth and Caleb’s eyes both seem to alight.

“There’s a door under there,” Veth breathed. Caleb was already shooing them all back away and pulling sulfur out of his components pouch, and Yasha did the only thing she could in the moment, and continued to hold onto Beau.

“We’re almost there, Beauregard,” Yasha said quietly, holding her cheek against Beau’s. Her skin was cold and unyielding, but Yasha could feel the short gasps of breath coming against her neck. Beau wasn’t gone yet. Maybe, Yasha thought, she would save this one. 

Caleb sent  _ Widogast’s Web of Fire _ splashing out against the wall, and as the flames erupted, sloughing off the ice in large, watery segments, Yasha could see the desperate need in his eyes as well. His eyes were hyper-focused, fingers twitching in this way and that, redirecting the threads of fire to cut down to the metal of the door. Maybe fire could save his family this time. 

Yasha brought Beau closer then, hoping that the steam in the hallway would coax a little bit of warmth back to her body, or at least dissipate the ice. Caleb was trying the door now, arms shaking with effort as he tried to force the handle, unable to move it from where it was sealed in place.

“Veth, it’s locked,” Caleb said urgently. Veth was there suddenly, out from underfoot, and somewhere, Yasha vaguely recognized that she had been pressed up against Beau’s legs as they dangled down at Yasha’s side. Caduceus seamlessly moved into the space that Veth had vacated, and poured a healing spell into Beau. Whatever time they could buy felt precious now, invaluable. 

There was a click then, under Veth’s deft fingers, and she slammed the door open with more force than Yasha would have thought the halfling capable of. The thieves’ tools, still in the mouth of the lock, scattered everywhere as the door swung inward. Veth wasted no time dashing through. Yasha’s legs were threatening to give out beneath her, suddenly languorous and spent from the exertion of getting them this far, but Caduceus and Caleb effectively bundled her through, into the chamber beyond.

“Which one, Caduceus?” Veth’s shrill voice cried out. She was gesturing around at the walls of cabinets and workbenches, the multitude of vials and beakers and jars instantly overwhelming. Caduceus faltered, eyes darting around in the semi-dark with sudden uncertainty, fear.

“ _ Find the Path _ , it doesn’t do that!” Yasha stared over at him, and was surprised to see the look of a man overwhelmed. He looked unsure, and that didn’t fit Caduceus at all.

Caleb whipped a forked twig out of his components pouch and muttered an arcane phrase before looking up around the room, the edges of his irises just a bit alight beyond their normal blue with some magical enhancement.

“I’ve got it,” he said quickly, crossing the room in confident steps before plucking a vial from its stand on one of the abandoned work benches. “Here,  _ schnell _ , quickly please.” 

It felt like she was moving through water, though she knew intellectually that she was moving much faster. Part of her mind was sectioned off, tracking the weak breaths of air coming soft against her neck, ever slower, ever softer. She laid Beau down on the ground at Caleb’s feet, kneeling beside her, and propping her up.

Beau’s face had a sheen of ice on it, Yasha realized now, everywhere except where her cheek had been pressed against Yasha’s. Her neck and her front seemed similarly spared, as if Yasha’s body warmth alone had preserved her from fully icing over. Beau’s body was stiff in Yasha’s arms, and she realized, stopping her efforts to fully sit Beau up, that she could break her digits, her limbs, another precious part of Beau with too forceful of movements.

Absently, she saw Veth untie the blindfold from Beau’s eyes. They were iced shut, so much for preventative measures. She couldn’t have seen the daylight if she’d wanted to, if she’d tried.

Caleb’s hand was trembling slightly as he unstoppered the vial and raised it to Beau’s lips. Yasha supposed they should count their blessings that Beau’s mouth was still ajar. The liquid inside was milky white-blue, not dissimilar to the powder that Beau had inhaled back when this whole travesty had started. 

Caleb kept the vial at her lips until they were sure it had all gone down. For a terrifying moment, Caleb and Yasha’s eyes met over Beau’s still-unmoving body, and Yasha knew that they were both feeling the beginnings of a familiar percussion in their heads:  _ your fault, your fault, too late, your fault. _

Then Beau took a deeper breath.

The ice on her face was starting to recede, and her eyes drifted open, not particularly quickly, her eyes behind them focused on some faraway point past the ceiling. But her eyes were opening. The blue veins in her skin were receding back towards her core. The ice was melting.

“Beau, you’re okay,” Yasha felt her voice crack and break as she leaned down to place a kiss at the corner of Beau’s mouth. Beau didn’t move to acknowledge her, like she was awaking from some years-long dream and her mind was slowly cranking back into gear.

“Beauregard,” Caleb said softly. His voice was shaky too, and Yasha glanced up to see an uncommon brightness in his eyes, but a still-guarded expression. “Beauregard, say something, please.”

The slowly thawing body of Beauregard Lionett took a few more level breaths, slowly blinking her way back to awareness. Then a single breath came out as a shudder, her whole upper body convulsing with the reflex. A shiver began to set in then, and with stiff arms, began to pull her left hand up and into her chest. Yasha felt her heart plummet.

Oh god, her hand. 

Shaking still, Beau’s eyes opened and looked at Yasha, full of tears, a small smile on her lips. 

“You s-saved me,” Beau said, her raw voice reverent, somewhat disbelieving. She then curled onto her side as best she could with her half-thawed-out limbs, and began to sob.

* * *

All Beau could feel was the pain, like fire, spreading across her skin. All of her nerves had been numb under the effect of such severe cold, but as feeling began to return, her body went into overdrive telling her that  _ everything is wrong and we’re dying, what the fuck are you doing? _

She’d at least been able to look at Yasha. Had she thanked her? She couldn’t recall. Her pain receptors were still beating constant alarm bells, panicking, as if the reawakening was worse then the frozen end. In fairly short order, Beau relented to her bodily instincts, and felt herself begin to sob, curling the best she could into the fetal position, as if there was even any heat there yet to retain.

Beau was only partially aware of the movement and action happening around her, the hands on her shoulder, setting the nerve endings on fire, and someone trying to tug one of her hands away from her chest. 

“We are trying to help Beau, I’m sorry, I’ve got you, I’m sorry,” Yasha’s voice was the only stimulus Beau could hear that she wanted to hang onto, and so she clung to it.

“My skin is on fire, Yasha, please, I’m burning” Beau heard herself begging. A part of her brain hoped that she wouldn’t remember this part, the way her animal instincts betrayed her pride. There was a gasp somewhere else, pained, and Beau wondered if she wasn’t hearing her own breath.

“I’m sorry, Beau, it’s okay, we’ve got you,” Yasha was saying. “Sleep, Beau, it’s okay, it’s all going to be alright.”

So Beau slept.

* * *

When she came to again, it felt like no time had passed, but Beau knew that couldn’t be true. Her skin, while stinging as it brushed against the fabric of her clothes, was more like a sunburn than a wildfire. And wherever she was, she was warm. It must have been the tower. There was nothing else warm in this place. It was almost a lovely enough feeling to fall back into, to sleep in until this bone-deep exhaustion faded.

But two things caught Beau’s attention and piqued her curiosity. The first thing was the heavy, throbbing pain in her left hand. The second thing was the warm shape of someone holding her right hand in theirs. 

Beau groaned involuntarily as she struggled to open her eyes and shift in her bed.

“Please, take it slow.” The sound of Yasha’s voice warmed whatever last dregs of cold were lurking in Beau’s heart.

“Mmm,” Beau hummed as she walked herself awkwardly up onto her elbows, keeping Yasha’s hand in hers. “But I can’t kiss you from down here.”

In the half-lit light of the bedchamber, Beau saw Yasha’s form lean over towards her and plant a soft kiss on Beau’s lips. It was short and chaste, but Yasha’s lips were so soft and Beau wondered absently if this was really happening, or if it was just the delusion of a freezing or thawing brain. It was a comforting delusion, if it wasn’t real. 

“There, now please lay back down,” Yasha said. Her tone was firm, but there was a gentle teasing in it that made Beau smile.

“I swear I’m usually a way better kisser, Yash,” Beau said immediately, half wincing at herself as the words came out.  _ Really? I’m usually better at this? C’mon Lionett. _

“I believe you, Beauregard. You can show me once you are back on your feet.”

“Oh, so I did live?” Beau said, mildly surprised. Yasha’s form stiffened a little in the dim light of the sconces on the wall. 

“You are alive,” Yasha said, her voice a little tighter now. “It was no small feat to keep you that way.” There was a grief in her voice, a pain that she was still feeling somewhere in her gut. Beau knew somewhere in the back of her mind that she would have to answer for that pain someday, because she was almost certain she’d caused it.

“I’m not renowned for making anything easier for anyone,” Beau said, trying to steer the conversation back towards a place where her loopy nonchalance would be tolerated. She would listen to Yasha tolerate her all day, if it meant they kept talking.

“No, you certainly are not,” Yasha managed. “At least your stubbornness worked to our advantage here too. Kept you alive long enough for us to find the cure.”

“Ah, so that’s why I feel like I’ve spent six hours asleep in the Nicodranas sun,” Beau mused. “Cured it all, so my skin’s not happy it was stuck under permafrost.”

“I don’t imagine that feels very nice,” Yasha said, her voice shaking a little. She was trying so hard to play along, Beau could hear it in the timbre of her voice. Beau squeezed Yasha’s hand before holding up the other one. 

“Can you turn up the lights? My left hand hurts… like, kind of a lot,” Beau asked. She went to pull her right hand away from Yasha’s, but found that the other woman held fast. 

“Beau, I’m so sorry,” Yasha said, the shaking in her voice even stronger now. “I was carrying you through the ruin. We were so close but you were freezing over.”

“Yasha, it’s fine, whatever it is, I’ll work through it, I’m adaptable,” Beau felt herself bluster. A deeper fear had begun to creep through her mind, but she pushed back on it as hard as she could.

“We fell on some black ice,” Yasha continued. Her grip was ironclad on Beau’s right hand. “And I thought I- I tried to keep you from hitting anything at all, I tried so hard Beau, I am so sorry. I… two of your fingers broke off.” Beau froze, the pain and fogginess in her head giving way to the adrenaline spiking through her. 

“And here I thought you were going to tell me I had a block of ice for a hand for the rest of eternity,” Beau said. She impressed even herself with the amount of flippancy in her tone. She squeezed Yasha’s right hand, but Yasha’s figure had stilled.

“Beau… you’re missing two fingers on your left hand,” Yasha said, as if something might have gotten lost in communication between them. “Jester thinks she or Caduceus might be able to help you grow them back with some cleric spell, but not until we leave Eiselcross.” Beau swallowed against the lump in her throat.

“I hear you, Yasha,” Beau said. “I’m more worried that you’re only going to be willing to hold one of my hands the whole time-”

“Will you stop acting like nothing happened?” Yasha snapped, cutting across Beau’s bluster with an agitated tone. “You contracted an ancient illness, almost  _ died  _ from that illness, you lost your fingers because of it and you are still trying to pretend that nothing happened! And something did happen!” Beau’s instincts flared to attention, and she leaned back on the defensiveness that she retreated to so well.

“I’m sorry I’m not processing this the way you want, but it happened to  _ me _ ! I can process this however I want to!” Beau said. 

“It did not  _ just _ happen to you! We all had to sit here and watch you suffer, I thought I was going to have to watch you die, Beau!” Yasha snapped back. “I fell and broke your hand and you might not care that I hurt you, but I do.”

There was a heavy silence then, and Beau recognized, distantly, that she was still holding Yasha’s hand. That Yasha’s hand was still holding her back. There was the sound of heavy breathing, and it took Beau a moment to realize it was her own. As it always did in Beauregard’s experience, the fear came after the fight. 

“‘m sorry, Yash,” Beau said croakily. “That wasn’t… I wasn’t…” She let her hand go slack in Yasha’s. Permission for her to pull away. It was an out she was used to giving. 

“It is alright,” Yasha said. Her voice was gentler now, more in control as if to balance the way Beau was cowering like a dog who got kicked in the ribs for showing its teeth. She gave Beau’s hand a squeeze, and Beau felt the shame return, but beneath it, all those emotions of fear, regret, and anger she had felt when the vial broke, and when her strength failed, and every time she’d lashed out since then.

“I guess I just don’t understand still?” Beau said timidly. “I’m such a fucking shitty person and you saved my ass like three separate times and I don’t know why you think- why any of you think I’m worth that.”

“I do not need you to understand it” Yasha said. Her tone, while it had never left her soft register, was gentler now. “But I would like you to stop trying to hide your pain from me-- from any of us-- just because you want to spare me the trouble.”

“I don’t want to need you though,” Beau protested weakly. “I want you to feel like you don’t have to worry about me. If I can take care of myself, I’ll never be a burden to you. I’ll never make you want to leave me behind.” She heard a small huff that could have been Yasha laughing, before a lamp beside the table was lit, the small magical fire inside casting warm orangey light. Yasha looked exhausted, and a little sad, but she was still smiling a little. 

“If you think that any of us could ever leave you behind after all we have been through together, there might be a larger discussion that needs to happen with all of the Mighty Nein present,” Yasha said, squeezing Beau’s hand.

“I mean, we can do that another time though. Later, y’know, not now. Some time in the far-off distant future,” Beau said, proud of the way she made Yasha chuckle this time. 

Yasha then reached out then, putting the back of her other hand against Beau’s forehead. Beau felt a modicum of surprise upon realizing that Yasha’s hand was actually cold against Beau’s head, and Beau leaned into the feeling unconsciously.

“I never thought anyone else would ever feel cold to me again, but your hand feels like, unreal good right now,” Beau said happily, her eyes slipping shut of their own accord

“It is because your body is trying to recover from spending a week on ice,” Yasha said, brushing Beau’s hair from her face, “and your left hand is still very broken.”

“Which I do not, and will not blame you for, by the way,” Beau said distantly, cracking an eye open beneath Yasha’s hand.

“Maybe so,” Yasha said, smiling shyly, letting her free hand fall back down to her side, settling into her chair next to Beau’s bed. Gods, she looked tired. Beau wanted, no,  _ needed _ , to fix that.

“Will you come join me at least?” Beau asked, smacking the bed beside her. “No funny business or anything, I swear, I just… you look uncomfortable in that chair.” It was a lame excuse, and both of them knew it wasn’t the real reason she was asking, but Yasha only had to consider it for a moment before leaning down to untie the laces of her boots. 

It was at this time that Beau was able to hold up and examine her left hand. It was bandaged up despite the fact that she was sure a ton of healing had gone into it already from the way it ached rather than stabbed in pain. She slowly curled her thumb and pointer and middle fingers into a fist. Not enough surface area to do the damage she wanted to do. She would have to do some experimental training to see how she might protect the knuckle joints at the outside of her hand, she couldn’t just go breaking her hand from the pressure every time she punched.

Yasha interrupted Beau’s intense focus as she took Beau’s left hand between both of hers and gave the back of it a soft kiss before she climbed over Beau and under the sheets beside her.

“Mmm, I could get used to this,” Beau said, snuggling in closer to Yasha’s body, shivering with pleasure as Yasha’s arms wrapped around her.

“I have to say that I do not mind it either,” Yasha replied. Beau relished the way she could hear Yasha’s voice vibrating in her chest, the way her breath felt atop Beau’s head. “I like holding you a lot more when you are conscious and I am not carrying you through frozen ruins.” Beau looked up at Yasha from where her head rested on her shoulder.

“How long did you carry me?” She asked, feeling a mischievous smile cross her face instinctively. Yasha just smiled back and shook her head.

“When you look at me like that, I feel as if I am being sized up to be your sherpa for the rest of our time in Eiselcross,” Yasha said primly. “I do not want to be objectified like that.” If she hadn’t been smiling at Beau then, Beau might have interpreted the comment as a genuine request. Yasha could be like that, her sense of humor so dry and quick that even knowing her for months, Beau couldn’t always tell when she was joking. She liked that though. Kept her on her toes.

“Mmm, no, I’m just trying to work out how long I’ll have to be on a payment plan to pay you back all that gold I owe you for carrying me around for so long,” Beau said.

“Oh for years at least,” Yasha said quickly. “I might just have to start taking your cut of the payment for all this work we’re doing.”

“All this work we’re doing for a dead lady who isn’t going to be paying us any time soon, right,” Beau said. Yasha huffed with laughter then, and Beau felt her chest physically puff out with pride. She nuzzled closer into Yasha, planting a kiss to her shoulder, just below the clavicle, and felt the other woman’s arms tighten minutely around her as well. She smelled like Yasha-- like she’d just come in from the outdoors, with a slight musk of sweat and a tinge of ozone on her and Beau thought to herself that it just might be the most beautiful scent in the world.

“Do you want to eat or drink anything?” Yasha asked then. “We can call up one of the cats for it.” Beau shook her head, luxuriating in the feeling of Yasha’s skin on hers, despite the headache that was rising to the fore.

“Just you,” Beau said sleepily.

“Then let's get you back to sleep,” Yasha said quietly. “The others are sleeping out in your main room and they will want to see you in the morning.”

“You’ll stay here though?” Beau asked, forcing her eyes open to look over and Yasha laying beside her. Yasha leaned over and pressed another kiss against her lips, a little firmer this time. A reassurance.

“I will be here the whole time.”

This time when Beau slipped back to sleep, there was no pain. At least, there was nothing that could get past the joy buzzing through her and the sound of Yasha’s heart beating steadily in her ear.

* * *

“Beau!” Jester’s voice woke her up what felt like only moments later, despite the fact that light was streaming in through the tower windows.

“Nngh, Jes?” Beau struggled to articulate, forcing her eyes open in the sunlight. The moment she realized that she was alone in the bed again, she sat up with a start, panic seizing on the promise Yasha had made her the night before.

“Is something wrong, Beau?” Yasha asked. Beau’s gaze whipped across the room where Yasha was sitting at a small side table, looking freshly bathed, drinking a steaming cup of tea. She couldn’t believe she missed watching Yasha bathe.  _ Fuck _ . 

Beau’s mouth opened to protest, to bicker flirtily the way she loved so much, but the wind was promptly knocked out of her by a little blue tiefling grabbing her up in a fierce hug. Heart swelling, Beau hugged her back.

“Beau, I was so worried, we split up so I didn’t know what happened to you until me and Fjord caught up but you were already asleep when we got there and Caleb just said he was going to build his tower early and-”

“Maybe give her a minute to wake up, Jessie?” Beau looked past Jester to see Fjord standing in the doorway, grinning at her. She would have bet her staff that the rest of the Mighty Nein were huddled just behind him as well, but were “taking turns” so as not to “overwhelm her” or some other dumb bit of bedside etiquette. 

“Heya, Captain,” Beau said smiling at him as Jester pulled away. As she made to get up, Beau was surprised and a little embarrassed by the way all three people in the room simultaneously winced and put out their hands to either stop or catch her.

“No, Beau, hold on, you’re still sick, Caduceus is making tea to take care of it, but you have to stay here until then!” Jester said, clucking as if Beau already knew this and was being purposefully obstinate. As Beau sat back against the edge of the bed with a sullen expression, she did realize with a bit of chagrin that she felt hot and was tilting slightly to the side with a head heavy with vertigo.

“Ugh, fine,” Beau grumbled, tucking her legs back up into bed and leaning back against the headboard. She closed her eyes only for a moment, trying not to relish how good it felt. When she opened her eyes again, Jester was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed and was pulling Beau’s feet into her lap. 

“Just let us take care of you, Beau!” Jester beseeched, those big, dark blue eyes staring hard at her. Beau took a deep breath and forced a bit of her prickliness back down before nodding and smiling at Jester who nodded back, a relieved smile on her face.

“You guys have been taking care of me a lot, that’s all,” Beau said, looking hesitantly over at Yasha. She and Fjord were exchanging a knowing look that would have felt patronizing had Yasha not then reached over to hold Beau’s hand.

“It doesn’t feel like we’ve been taking care of you,” Jester said, her demeanor suddenly going a little guilty. “None of my healing seemed to help, I couldn’t really take care of you at all, Beau.” 

“We’re family, and family takes care of each other,” Fjord added. He was standing behind Jester, both hands on her shoulders. 

“Since we’re family and all, will you two go and bathe now? You smell worse than Beauregard,” Veth’s familiar voice called from behind Fjord. Her hair was plaited back, but clearly still drying, and her eyes were bright. “Plus, it’s our turn to see the invalid.” 

Fjord took mock offense while Jester put a hand to her chest.

“ _ Excuse _ me, but you travelled with stinky Caleb for months! We definitely do not smell that bad,” Jester said matter-of-factly. Before getting up from the bed, she reached over and touched the wrist of Beau’s bandaged hand, and Beau felt a little more clear-headed as a dose of healing magic poured into her.

“Thanks Jes,” Beau said quietly. “Go take care of yourself, I’ll be fine in no time.”

“Okay, Beau,” Jester said, dropping a quick kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be like,  _ right _ back!” Beau watched with a barely-surpressed smile as Jester and Fjord left holding hands. She’d have to rib Fjord about that later when people were feeling a little more ready to take a joke from her.

“She’s not dead, Caleb! I told you she wouldn’t be,” Veth said, pulling herself up into the spot Jester had just vacated. Caleb slunk into the room behind her, also looking freshly bathed and for all the world like he was afraid to be there.

“I believed you, Veth,” Caleb said quietly. “You do not have to go shouting in Beauregard’s face.” He looked up at Beau, and she gave him her best and most reassuring smile that she could muster.

“That’s just my voice, you know that!” Veth said back shrilly. Beau chuckled quietly at this, and tried not to react to the way that Yasha had dropped her hand and gotten out of the chair next to her, ushering Caleb to sit instead. He looked hesitant.

“Hey man, what’s up?” Beau said to him, trying to get her voice to sound as normal as possible, disguising her hoarseness under the usual rough timbre she put on.

“Hello to you too, Beauregard,” Caleb said, sitting delicately. “You look much better than you did the last time I saw you.”

“Yeah, well I think we can all agree that  _ Beau-cicle _ was not my best look,” Beau tried, shooting him a grin.

“No, I mean when the ice was melting. Do you remember it at all?” Caleb asked. Beau tried and failed to suppress a shudder at the memory.  _ Her nerves on fire. Her skin just burning, burning as the feeling returned. It even hurt to cry. _

“Yeah, bits and pieces,” Beau said. “That shit hurt.”

“I was afraid, for some time, that I had given you the wrong concoction,” Caleb admitted, his fingers picking nervously at the hem of his coat. “You said… you kept saying you were burning, and on fire and-” his voice cut out and his eyes looked very far away in that moment and Beau felt her chest clench.

“Oh. Oh, no, Caleb, shit, I’m so sorry that you thought-”

“I was not asking for an apology from you, Beauregard,” Caleb interrupted, holding up a hand to wave off her apology. His face was pale, but he met her gaze then. “I just mean… I was very scared for you. That we were going to lose you.”

“You didn’t,” Beau said as firmly as she could.

“No, we didn’t,” Caleb agreed. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand to her, and Beau used it to pull him into a hug against her chest.

“Thank you,” Beau said quietly in his ear. “You did enough, I’m not going anywhere, Caleb.”

“No, I should think not. I am very glad for it,  _ schwester _ .” A third body joined the hug, trying in vain to wrap tiny arms around both Caleb and Beau.

“I’m glad you’re not dead too!” Veth said loudly, clearly trying to bring up the mood of the place. Both Beau and Caleb laughed a little at this, and Beau gave Veth a one-armed squeeze before laying back against the headboard.

“Don’t let Veth fool you, she was instrumental in taking care of you the whole time,” Caleb said conspiratorially. “She was the only one among us who actually knew how to care for hypothermia at all.” Beau gave Veth a sidelong look which the halfling, rolled her eyes to avoid meeting.

“I would have done it for any of you, except maybe Fjord,” Veth huffed, crossing her arms and leaning back against the footboard of Beau’s bed. Beau could see through the bluster though, having put on many similar airs herself in the past, and the way Veth gave her foot a squeeze just confirmed the maternal instinct lurking just beneath the surface.

“I owe all of you a lot for what you’ve done,” Beau said, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her unbandaged hand, scowling at the thought. 

“That’s nonsense.” Beau straightened up hopefully as Caduceus entered the room, tea in hand. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better than I was feeling yesterday, that’s for fucking sure,” Beau said eagerly, eyeing the tea that Jester had promised. “That going to fix me up the rest of the way?”

Caduceus chuckled as he passed it to her over Caleb.

“It’ll fix up your fever for sure,” he said, shrugging. “Assuming you didn’t catch some other ancient illness.”

“Real uplifting, Caddy,” Beau said, raising the mug up to him in a toast before beginning to gulp the scalding liquid down. It was more bitter than most of Caduceus’s teas, but the warmth felt good on her throat and she eagerly drank.

“ _ Schiesse _ , don’t choke on it,” Caleb muttered, thumping her on the back as she began coughing, having to stop halfway through.

“Don’t like sitting still,” Beau offered as an explanation. Caleb shook his head, but smiled over at her before rising to his feet and nodding to Veth and Caduceus.

“We’ll be having breakfast down in the salon in a bit, if you’re feeling up to joining us,” he said as he began to herd the others out.

“Sure. Thanks, Duceus!” Beau called out. She saw a blue firbolg hand raise up in acknowledgement before Caleb closed the door behind them, and Beau found herself and Yasha alone again. Yasha was regarding her quietly, and Beau returned to her tea, gulping down more of the bitter liquid until there was nothing left but the leaves at the bottom.

“Feeling better?” Yasha asked. She was approaching the bed again, eyes locked on Beau, gaze darting from her face to her hands, as if searching for a sign that something had gone amiss. Beau stopped for a moment to consider the question. Already, the vicious spinning had stopped, and the heat and pressure in her head and stomach had subsided.

“A lot better, actually,” Beau said gleefully. “Remind me never to give Caduceus shit about his dead people tea ever again.” She stood up and stretched, reveling in her body feeling normal again, if not a little stiff. Beau could work with that.

“I don’t think you’ll need a reminder for that,” Yasha noted, and Beau could feel Yasha’s eyes follow her as Beau pulled out new clothes for the day and began to change unceremoniously.

“No bath?” Yasha asked. Beau paused, looking over at her cheekily in just her smallclothes, trying to not to get distracted by the way Yasha’s eyes raked over her body hungrily.

“I didn’t get to watch you, you don’t get to watch me,” Beau teased, and Yasha smiled back at her, a wicked glint in her eye. “Plus, I’m hungry. I need some pancakes or something, and I need them in the next five minutes.”

“Far be it from me to stand between a monk and her pancakes,” Yasha said with mock reverence. Beau slid into a fresh set of clothes and laced her boots back up before turning to Yasha with a grin, reaching for Yasha’s hand and intertwining their fingers.

“Then let's go get them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I honestly didn't know I had it in me to churn out a 20k word fic in less than 2 weeks, but I'm so glad I did! I've so enjoyed this process of finding my voice and the voices of the Mighty Nein in the process of writing this, and I hope you've enjoyed reading along!
> 
> If you've enjoyed this fic, please drop a review and let me know! I'm hoping to continue writing for Beau/Yasha, and can't wait to create some more.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! :)


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